Newspaper publisher Reach is to axe 550 jobs, or 12% of its workforce, in an overhaul designed to cut costs by £35m a year. The group includes the national Mirror, Express and Daily Star titles as well as Scotland's Daily Record and regional dailies such as the Liverpool Echo and the Manchester Evening News. Reach's announcement came as it reported a 27.5% plunge in quarterly revenue and said it was facing "structural change" in the sector accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic.
The UK's biggest accountancy firms have been told to ring-fence their audit arms from their consultancy units by 2024 in a major shake-up of the sector. The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has told the "Big Four" they must submit separation plans by October. It follows the collapse of several high-profile companies that had been approved by auditors, such as government contractor Carillion. The Big Four accountancy firms - KPMG, EY, PwC and Deloitte - came in for heavy criticism in the wake of Carillion's collapse which cost 2,400 people their jobs and - according to the National Audit Office - left the taxpayer on the hook for £148m.
A multibillion-dollar pipeline of projects aiming to ship gas around the world on giant tankers could be in jeopardy because of a collapse in the global gas market. A study by Global Energy Monitor has found that spending on new gas terminals needed to ship super-chilled liquified natural gas (LNG) on seaborne tankers has more than doubled in the past year, from $82.8bn (£66.3bn) to $196.1bn. The global market price of LNG had tumbled to record lows before the coronavirus outbreak and has fallen further as lockdown measures across the world’s major economies continue to sap demand for fossil fuels.
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